Description: Greek Bronze coin of the Kingdom of Macdeon under Philip II father of Alexander III The Great and Philip III Arrhidaeus, circa 359 to 336 BC.

Obverse: Head of Apollo Right wearing Tainia in dotted circle

Reverse: Horse with youthful rider galloping right, ΦIΛIППOY above, Symbol/Monogram below

Mint: Macedonian Mint

Size: 16 mm

Weight: 3.24 g

Ref:  SNG Cop 594; SNG ANS 908.

Condition: VF+/aVF . Very nice example of this type. strong obverse.

As always, Please use the Pictures as your judge as grading is subjective.

Inventory:2006.48.2;

Notes: In 357 BC, Philip married the Epirote princess Olympias, who was the daughter of the king of the Molossians. Alexander was born in 356, the same year as Philip's racehorse won at the Olympic Games. It is possible that this coin type of horse and rider is a celebration of his Olympic victories in horse racing.

Alexander the Great was one of the most prolific Kings of the time (really of all time) and his wide ranging efforts of expanding his kingdom led also to a huge corpus of coinage that was issued both under he and his family. The empire and military efforts were started by his father Philip II who also had strong military career himself and had started towards the expansion into Persia that his son famously completed. While the quantity of their coin types isn't overwhelming, it is the amazing variety of coins in terms of mints, field and control marks, symbols, and monograms, etc which makes these coins even more intriguing. The study of the huge variety of coins of Alexander both the drachms and tetradrachms as well as the numerous bronze coins would be an immense undertaking in and of itself and having a full catalog from Price on his coins alone (with Philip) shows this.

Philip II of Macedon (382–336 BC) was the king (basileus) of the kingdom of Macedon from 359 BC until his assassination in 336 BC. He was a member of the Argead dynasty of Macedonian kings, the third son of King Amyntas III of Macedon, and father of Alexander the Great and Philip III. The rise of Macedon, its conquest and political consolidation of most of Classical Greece during the reign of Philip II was achieved in part by his reformation of the Ancient Macedonian army, establishing the Macedonian phalanx that proved critical in securing victories on the battlefield. After defeating the Greek city-states of Athens and Thebes at the Battle of Chaeronea in 338 BC, Philip II led the effort to establish a federation of Greek states known as the League of Corinth, with him as the elected hegemon and commander-in-chief of Greece for a planned invasion of the Achaemenid Empire of Persia. However, his assassination by a royal bodyguard, Pausanias of Orestis, led to the immediate succession of his son Alexander, who would go on to invade the Achaemenid Empire in his father's stead.

Youth and accession Philip was the youngest son of the king Amyntas III and Eurydice I. In his youth, Philip was held as a hostage in Illyria under Bardylis and then was held in Thebes (c. 368–365 BC), which was then the leading city of Greece. While a captive there, Philip received a military and diplomatic education from Epaminondas, became eromenos of Pelopidas, and lived with Pammenes, who was an enthusiastic advocate of the Sacred Band of Thebes. In 364 BC, Philip returned to Macedon. The deaths of Philip's elder brothers, King Alexander II and Perdiccas III, allowed him to take the throne in 359 BC. Originally appointed regent for his infant nephew Amyntas IV, who was the son of Perdiccas III, Philip succeeded in taking the kingdom for himself that same year.

Philip's military skills and expansionist vision of Macedonian greatness brought him early success. He first had to remedy a predicament which had been greatly worsened by the defeat against the Illyrians in which King Perdiccas himself had died. The Paionians and the Thracians had sacked and invaded the eastern regions of Macedonia, while the Athenians had landed, at Methoni on the coast, a contingent under a Macedonian pretender called Argeus.

Some Excerpts From Wikipedia, the Free Encyclopedia